"Liturgies of state" are major ceremonies where political and religious dimensions are combined. These liturgies make use of complex rituality which ally collective and individual interests. These liturgies have a twofold interest for research in practical theology: on the one hand as a reflexion of society and on the other as a model for the members of this society. 1) Napoleon's crowning (1804) opened a new era in the domain of public rituality, an entrance, so to speak, into modernity. 2) The end of this epoch corresponds to the two funerals of President Mitterrand (1996). These funerals are significant for the rituality proper to ultra-modernity, marked by the primacy given to self-realization and decompartmentalization. 3) Catholic rituality is henceforth in a state of tension between its own objectivity and the subjectivity and plurality proper to ultra-modernity. This tension makes itself manifest in the liturgy through the phenomenon of ultra-personalization.